My Latest Venture

I'm trying to earn extra income, so I have decided to try and sell books on Amazon. I have a friend who is doing it and she made 4K last month, her highest month ever. I figured I would start out selling books and CD's from around the house and try and earn enough money to buy a book scanner, which is some kind of PDA device that you can use to scan book ISBN numbers and see how much you can get for the book at Amazon. I don't even know what this scanner is called, but according to my friend, its the key to making the profits. But I am not going to buy it until I earn enough off the sales to buy it, since I don't want to allocate any money to additional purchases required for money-making schemes. I will definately buy it if I can earn the money from selling my books, but not right now. I just sold my first item, and I made 11.83, minus $2.23 for shipping, so thats $9.60 from one item. So you see, If I could average 10 bucks an item, 20 items a day would be 200 extra bucks a day. Thats what I am shooting for. The beauty of the amazon book business is it doesn't cost anything to get started. Just list some books and CD's you don't really use anymore, and start the money flow going. I'll pick up more books at the goodwill and garage sales once my inventory at home sells out. I currently have 11 items listed.

Wandering Around the Internet

Okay, so I admit I am at work and I spent a little time looking for passive income opportunities online. There are so many ways to make a little money out there, and all of them claim to be "the one." I really can't decide at this point if any of them are really worth spending time on. Some people say you should just pick one affiliate program and stick with it and other people say work them all through something like an information website or through your blog. Its definately a vast sea of opportunity out there in cyberspace. Affiliate programs, ebook sales, adsense, t-shirt and product sales, dropshippers.....how does one choose?

The More Money You Have The Less You Pay

I've noticed this lately. If you have money, you pay less for everything. One example that comes to mind is getting braces for your kid. At my local orthodontist, it costs about 6k for a set of braces, but if you have the money to pay in full, you get them for 5k. Thats one thousand bucks difference! ANd if you are buying a new car and can put a chunk of cash down on the new vehicle, you can negotiate a better interest rate, which means overall you pay less. If don't have enough money in the bank, they charge you fees for going below the minimum amount, and overdraft charges are huge. It seems like the more money you have, the less you pay across the board. So...the only solution is to become financially free and learn to make more money.

Affiliate Income

I got my first affiliate check! It was only for $7.19, but I was surprised to get it in the mail. It was from LinkShare.com which is one of the largest online affiliate managers. If you don't know what affiliate income is, it is passive income (great!) earned by promoting the products of others, ususally, and in this case, online. Linkshare manages hundreds of advertisers and affiliates. Its free to join, and easy to create links, which are embedded with a tracking ID that relates back to the affiliate. (me, in this case). So how did I do it? A long time ago I created a page on squidoo on my passion for growing iris. You can check it out here: www.squidoo.com/iristalk. Well, someone managed to land on my page and purchased some bulbs through Dutch Gardens, one of the companies manaaged by Linkshare, and whose link I placed on my iris page. So...buoyed by the realization that I acrually can make some extra money to pay for my vacation home, I created another page that you can check out here: www.squidoo.com/ThePretendersChrissieHynde . Its really fun to make pages, or a "lens" as they say on squidoo, and what the heck, if you can make a few bucks, why not? Check it out. Also, I found a good site on affiliate income. http://www.affiliateconfession.com/

Visiting the 800 Pound Gorilla

I am starting to feel guilty about calling my vacation property an 800 pound gorilla. I mean, what did any gorilla do to deserve a designation as a problem? They are just gorillas, after all, peacefully chewing bamboo and contemplating the demise of Diane Fossey. Anyway, so we went up to visit the money pit, and its such a beautiful place, I get inspired when I am there. Inspired enough to think I can hang on despite the endless stream of bills and the mounting debt I am continually trying desperately to pay down so I can stick to my financial freedom plan and become job free. I know HOW to do it, but I am sort of stuck because of this property. BUT....I am trying to stay positive and new agey about it. Maybe there's a reason it has not sold! Maybe that 115K check I wrote to myself from "Universe Title Services" is going to happen! Next spring! Yeah!! Next spring!

Can't Get Rid of My 800 Pound Gorilla

So the saying goes. If you have one of these that is bringing you down financially, you need to get rid of it! My 800 pound gorilla is a vacation home that was supposed to be my ticket to job freedom, but instead has become a money pit. But as Jack Canfield would say, ask myself "What is the opportunity in this?" I suppose I have learned NEVER TO BUY A PROPERY THAT DOES NOT CASH FLOW, but I can't really be held responsible for the mortgage meltdown that has driven prices down and created a nearly impossible lending climate. So I just rented it on a ski lease, and really, the tenent got the better end of the deal. But he will pay all the bills for four straight months, and help out with the mortgage, and I will try to sell it again next spring. And I guess the opportunity in this is that I am now forced to think of really really creative ways to make more money. Having a huge mortgage on a home I don't even live in has forced me to acknowledge that short of foreclosing on it, I just need to make more money. Money making ideas anyone?

Update on my Quitting Date

I attended a pre-retirement seminar for my work and discovered that there is no real benefit to staying to the ten year mark. I can quit at age 50 and receive a small monthly paycheck and have medical and dental coverage, or I can stay until the ten year mark and wait to collect a bigger paycheck at 62, but have to suspend the medical and dental benefits until then as well. So....the time value of money and the cost of medical benefits means that the small paycheck plus the medical and dental benefits FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE at age 50 is a pretty good deal. That moves my quitting date up to Dec of 2009. I had better get on the ball and create my passive income streams. I am excited about the change on the horizon, investigating my options for doing something else, like teaching English abroad, or becoming a tour guide.
In other news, I finally listed the eight hundred pound gorilla on back (aka my vacation home) with a realtor. Any remaining equity will go to the realtors at this point, but I am going for debt relief. I can then spend the money I was putting into that on paying down the credit cards and getting this financial plan off the ground. I am determined to be financially free and I will make it happen. Stay tuned.